National Oreo Cookie Day

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It is National Oreo Cookie Day. 

If ever a cookie deserved its own holiday, it is the Oreo.  I don’t even mind if the government halts mail delivery.  

Oreo is the signature product of the National Biscuit Company, the food manufacturing giant better known as Nabisco.  The cream-filled cookie also made Hoboken, New Jersey famous for something other than its view of Manhattan.  A grocer in Hoboken was the first to sell the treats in cans for twenty-five cents a pound.   No one knows where the name Oreo came from; perhaps it is O for the O-shaped cookie, or O for the “Ohs!” uttered by the tasters in Nabisco’s test kitchens.

I once thought the Hydrox cookie was a sad wannabee, the second born, a disappointing substitute, but it turns out Hydrox was the first chocolate sandwich cookie of that type on the market.  Hydrox made its debut in 1908, four years before Oreo’s introduction in 1912.  The Oreo has been the best-selling cookie ever since.  Sorry, Hydrox, nice try, and a good idea…but the name Hydrox sounds more like an antiseptic, and the taste, compared to an Oreo, well…a lot like the taste following oral surgery.

The Oreo has stayed strong through two world wars, a great depression, and a bazillion weight loss trends.  The beloved cookie now comes in double-stuffed, thins, minis, Neapolitan, and Mega Stuff.  As of 2019,
450 billion Oreos were sold worldwide.  Add the consumption during the COVID pandemic year, and I am sure sales have easily climbed to 1.9 trillion. 

The National Biscuit Company was granted a trademark for the Oreo on March 14, 1912.  National Oreo Cookie Day is celebrated on March 6th because that is the day Nabisco made its application for the trademark.  That makes two miracles for the Oreo—the greatest cookie of all time and the fastest turnaround by a government office in history.

The product’s tag line is “Milk’s favorite cookie.”  Sure, there are a lot of dunkers out there, but there are many ways to eat an Oreo.  The best known strategy is for “a kid to eat the middle of an Oreo first and save the chocolate cookie outside for last.”  The process is important.  Lifting or prying the cookie apart is much less effective than the gentle twist that leaves the creamy layer intact to be scraped off by the eater’s two front teeth.

Oreo fanatics have expanded the brand.  Oreos are now a staple like flour or sugar.  Oreos appear in recipes for pie crusts, pies, cakes, ice cream, milkshakes, candy bars, and are even coated and deep fried  at county fairs.  Oreos are a snack, a dessert, a special treat, and paired with milk, they are practically a health food.

The standard package notes that a serving size is three cookies with twelve servings in a pack.  Really?  Who can eat just three?  I suspect that an entire row is more typical.  Three Oreos?  That just wets the appetite because Oreos are as addictive as cocaine.  They are the preferred party drug of the tea party crowd.

Decades ago, I experienced an Oreo overdose.  My mother had gone to the hospital to deliver a baby—my brother or sister?  I can’t remember because the real event was the Oreo tea party authorized by our father to keep my older sister and me out of his hair.  Mary and I each consumed far more than the suggested serving of three Oreos.  For dessert, we topped off our tea party meal with the Oreo’s favorite cousin, a bag of M&Ms.  When it was time to retire for the night, my sister and I climbed into our bunk beds that were covered with matching white chenille Sleeping Beauty bedspreads.  Initially, our stomachs gurgled just a bit, but before we could fall asleep, our guts erupted like Mount Vesuvius.   Eventually, we slept well.  The nightmare came for our mother who returned home with a new baby and plenty of laundry to do.  The entire episode was easily forgotten by me and my sister.  It may have contributed to our parents' later divorce, but Mary and I never fell out of love with Oreo cookies or tea parties.

Oreos have been around a long time.  Even their current design has remained unchanged since 1952, longer than I’ve been alive.  I like things that stand up to the test of time and remain sweet no matter how many times we encounter them.
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I feel a tea party coming on.  Hold the M&Ms.

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